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Competitions

Current:

The Times Student Law Advocacy Competition:

Trolls, instrusive advertising and surveillance: a debate is growing about the need for the protection of our privacy.

The digital revolution of the past two decades has transformed our lives. But the promise of a communications Utopia has now turned sour in a bleak landscape of trolls, intrusive advertising and Big Brother surveillance.

So the question for entrants to this year’s Times Student Advocacy competition sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills is: “Do we need a new Magna Carta for the digital age?”

The competition is open to all students registered with a UK academic institution, with prizes on offer worth £6,500.

The British Library: My Digital RightsWho is watching us when we’re online? Should governments monitor our movements on the Web? Should trolling be made illegal? Do we need an equivalent Magna Carta or a new bill of rights to protect the future of the internet?

Magna Carta: My Digital Rights is a new national schools programme inviting Secondary and FE students and teachers to consider their rights and responsibilities online.

Use the British Library’s free classroom resources, and share your thoughts with the world by uploading your students’ clause to our Magna Carta for the digital age. Deadline: 1st June.

Previous:

The J.C. Holt Undergraduate Essay Prize.The Magna Carta Project invites entries for the J.C. Holt prize for the best undergraduate essay on Magna Carta. The prize for the winning entry will be £250, to be awarded at the project’s conference at King’s College London/British Library, 17-19 June 2015.

Entries must be written by a current undergraduate student. They should address one of these questions, be between 2,000 and 2,500 words in length (inclusive of footnotes), and include a bibliography. In answering the question, entrants might choose to consider the original issue of Magna Carta in 1215, the Charter’s subsequent issues and/or the Charter’s later history. The judges will be looking for rigour of argument, clarity of expression and engagement with both primary sources and secondary literature. Entries should be emailed in PDF format to [email protected] no later than 1 March 2015.

The English Speaking Union: My Magna CartaMy Magna Carta is an international creative essay competition for 11 to 18 year olds to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta. Young people in the UK and across the ESU’s member countries in the Commonwealth and across the world are invited to create their very own Magna Carta for the 21st century. The competition is also open to entrants from other Commonwealth countries.

Taking the Magna Carta as their source document, the world’s youth are tasked with presenting a new document that safeguards and promotes the rights, privileges and liberties of either their own country or the whole world. As in the original document, entrants will need to give particular thought to the powers of presidents, prime ministers and monarchs that need to be limited. Entrants will be encouraged to draw lessons from recent national and international events.

This competition, hosted by the Law Society, is named after English solicitor Graham Turnbull who did much to promote respect for human rights. Entrants are asked to answer the following:

‘The roots of many of our basic rights go back to the Magna Carta whose 800th Anniversary is being celebrated in 2015. Given this important legacy, to what extent would proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights impact on the protection of human rights in the UK and around the world?’

The competition is open to all current or prospective law students, trainee solicitors, pupil barristers and all solicitors and barristers, within three years of admission/call at the closing date.

On 16th March, Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson launched the Magna Carta 800 Essay Competition for New Zealand students, to recognise the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta. The competition has both a High School and University category and is open to all current New Zealand secondary and tertiary students.

Featured Article

Lord Bingham

Master of the Rolls (1992-1996)

When you were kind enough to ask me to speak this evening I was Master of the Rolls and as such ex officio Chairman of the Magna Carta Trust. The Magna Carta Trust is a charitable body devoted to increasing knowledge of and...